Relapsed.

I hate myself right now.

I went and did it, again. This whole day is gone down the tubes because of it. I altered my appearance back, with one haircut and a session of grooming it will take me months to get back to where I was... I'm furious.

I feel like I'm having several psychotic breaks all at once. I told myself I wasn't going to indulge in homosexual behavior and while I haven't done it in person I still have gone and broken my own rule. July 15 - September 20, that was my period of celibacy and now it's completely wasted! No, you know what? "Furious" doesn't cover my feelings right now. I'm absolutely livid.

I am a highly skilled writer, I'm a brilliant artist, I am a master at problem solving so why the fuck can't I figure this out?

 

I mean no offense. I simply am fighting with myself... As I've said there is no religious or political agenda behind my war with my sexuality-- It's simply something I deal with everyday due to a ghost that haunts me.

As I've said, I feel like a transgendered/transsexual person in some ways-- I'm an asexual male trapped in a gay man's body-- or mind. Every day it gets better and worse at the same time like a string of taffy being pulled each way.

 

But why the horrified reaction after every orgasm? Why do I flee as soon as I'm relieved?

 

I'm just not sure what it is... I'm not from a religious family, nor is my family intolerant of homosexuality in any way. I study in religions as a hobby, but nothing more and am a sound agnostic. Is it anxiety? If it is why was I able to go through with my encounter with a woman and not a man? Perhaps it's something else... but what?

I was at the pharmacy earlier and my head practically cracked open when I saw the girl working the counter and the thoughts went through my head: Wouldn't it be nice if you could just ask her out, get married, have some kids, get old and watch your grandkids grow up? Wouldn't it be nice to just put all that silly gay nonsense on the shelf forever and get on with your life? Yes, it would but then it comes flooding back like a torrent. I fight it and fight it, not out of love of some god or archaic book... not out of a biased prejudice or phobia but from some personal artifact deep in the back of my brain clawing with a yellowed, bloody fingernail at a wall of craggy stone trying to make it all better.

What's behind that wall? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything I've ever wanted. Defense mechanisms... excuses, power to change my mind, the power to disappoint. These are things which at this point only I can understand. It'd be like showing a blind man something for the first time through new eyes. I'm so lost! I hear it, deep inside, scratching away at that wall. And all throughout this little stream of consciousness paragraph three little words persist in their typing: I'm going insane.

 

Maybe that is my idea of a perfect life-- correcting all the things my mother and my father got wrong-- they fell out of love, drifted apart and some part of me desperately wants to make amends for a broken past. What drives me mad is knowing it can never happen, given my circumstances-- and not just sexuality-wise-- but that's an entirely different beast altogether. In my mind I've written thousands of better outcomes, compromises and alternatives to natural course of my own timeline in a beautiful, starving vision of how I could have gotten it right if I had the resources, both natural and obtained by being forged of my own hands. I've always wanted to fix what's broken but I know I never can. Maybe the next time around.

Yes, that does seem to be the case with me-- a merry-go-round. One time I got so upset with myself that I shaved my head completely bald after some guy in a local gay chatroom called me 'too indecisive' or something along those lines. I knew it was true but I also knew what I wanted was something I can't have, not just because it's something I want that's too far out of reach but because it's hardwired into my programming to strive for the alternative-- born that way, if you like. And it drives me insane, deeper and deeper into a pit of broken glass I feel like my very essence is being torn apart by what I am in opposition to what I want to be.

Now keep in mind none of this, what you all perceive as 'homophobia' is based in religious beliefs or political affiliations or prejudices. As I've had to state numerous times I come from a progressive family, welcoming of the gay community even with some gay people in our own family. I hold no ill will towards the gay community, if I did I wouldn't even be on this website-- I'd be elsewhere, I think that's obvious. I need help, and I don't know how to get it, because it's easier to tell this story in this way than it is to tell a therapist in a sixty minute session for eight hundred dollars a week.

 

I think I kind of see what you're saying, maybe I just need to... take a vacation from my hardened shell for a bit.

On an interesting note, I've not fled the cyber-gay scene in more than 48 hours since my 'relapse,' I'm usually only on for a maximum of 12 hours before I grow so utterly disgusted with myself. Maybe it will be different this time. It feels different this time. I'm not sure why.

I need to retire for the night. It's late and my head is aching from the cold glow of this terrible machine.

 

Three or four days now... still haven't fled and deleted everything, however it's been a rollercoaster of pain with me. I'm forcing myself not to do what I feel is natural after orgasm which is to flee in disgust. I'm growing to hate myself increasingly because now I feel like forcing myself to accept this side of me is forcing me to accept something I've fought for so long and I'm losing the battle or the war. I'm literally at war with myself.

I've been sleeping a lot, I haven't shaved or showered since the beginning of the relapse and have been walking around my house with all the shades drawn and blinds shut peering out of them in a paranoid fashion worried one of the locals I've flirted with online will recognize me and try to approach me. I cannot allow that to happen.

Maybe if I just give the demon inside me room to let off steam without unleashing it completely by engaging in actual intercourse I can keep some sort of moderation on the whole thing. The longest I went without trouble was almost a year. But I can't remember how I did that-- it seems so long ago and I had gotten to a point where I was content enough in an appearance I'd created for myself that I felt distanced me from my 'gay persona,' but now I'm back in my "regular" appearance and it will take me months to reattain that look due to the style put into the hair and beard and... I'm rambling.

I haven't left the house in... four days? I should go buy food, I've been eating canned food I have in the back of my pantry and when I grab the mail from my mailbox I do it quickly and at night. I've barely spoken aloud in the last four days. I'm oversleeping and when I do wake up I feel tired and depressed, my whole body aches in a psychosomatic manner built on self hatred and shame and guilt and desire for what cannot be.

But I haven't fled, yet. I'm hoping that maybe that postmasturbatory malaise will fade, eventually, but it hasn't yet. What's 48+24? 72? I think that's how many hours into my own little exposure therapy has been going on. Since Saturday afternoon, it's what day? Tuesday so that's... I'm too tired to think properly. I'll keep everyone posted.